Photo by ASACP RTA | CC BY 2.0
Set against the ongoing mayhem at the White House, the frisky media play between Pres. Trump and his favorite porn-star, Stormy Daniels (aka Stephanie Clifford), is stealing the show.
The White House’s revolving back door has recently witnessed the departures of Rex Tillerson (secretary of state), Gary Cohn (economic adviser), Rob Porter (staff secretary) and Hope Hicks (communications director), among many, many others. One can only wonder who will next exit?
In January 2018, The Wall Street Journal broke the exposé that, in 2006, Trump had a tryst with porn star. It revealed that Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, allegedly paid “Ms. Daniels” $130,000 to sign an nondisclosure agreement (NDA) in October 2016 to keep quiet about her affair with then-candidate Trump. When word first got out, Trump and his attorney denied the story.
Additional revelations purport that Trump and Clifford maintained their consensual commercial sexual relation for about one year. Mother Jones added further spice to the brew, shedding light of the future president’s erotic proclivities. Based on published emails, the twosome engaged in s&m play, with the former porn star “spanking him with a copy of Forbes magazine.” Most suggestive, the issue of Forbes appears to be the one in which the future president and two of his children, Donald, Jr., and Ivanka, were on the cover.
The Clifford exposé was followed by another revelation, this one allegedly involving Karen McDougal, the 1998 Playmate of the Year. The Journal revealed that McDougal was about to release her story when the National Enquirer, a fierce Trump supporter, made an offer she couldn’t refuse, a generous payment of $150,000 for two years’ worth of her fitness columns and magazine covers. It noted that McDougal had a 10-month consensual affair with Trump in 2006.
Sadly, the two affairs occurred around the time that Trump’s third wife, Melania Trump, gave birth in March 2006 to their child, Barron. (It should be noted that a man having an extra-marital affair – voluntary or commercial – around the time a wife has a child is not uncommon.)
The misadventure between the misogynist president and the buxomly (now formerly) porn star might well have become just one more pathetic episode in the ongoing Trump fiasco had she not taken the proverbial bull by (his wayward) horn and started to publicly acknowledge – if only by a sly wink-and-node — something had taken place. Since January she has actively sought to use her newfound fame to enhance her commercial profile.
She appeared on nightly TV shows, including Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Inside Edition. She was the subject of a favorable personality profile in Rolling Stone. And, in late-January, she embarked on a nationwide promotional tour of strip clubs dubbed, “Make America Horny Again.” According to some reports, CBS News plans to run an interview with Clifford on March 25th. Stay tuned.
Clifford has stirred the Trump beehive and he has responded predictably. Her attorney, Michael Avenatti, filed an initial complaint in the Los Angeles County Superior Court against Trump claiming the NDA she signed was not valid because Cohen signed it on behalf of Trump — instead of Trump signing it himself. This action was quickly followed, in February, when Cohen won a temporary restraining order against Clifford from a private arbitrator to block her from talking about the contents of the NDA. He then moved to initiate arbitration proceedings against Clifford. Just last week, a new attorney for Trump and Cohen, Charles Harder, filed a lawsuit against Clifford seeking to move the case to federal court are claiming she could owe as much as $20 million to Trump and company for violating the NDA. (Harder is best known for representing Hulk Hogan in a lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker.)
Clifford’s attorney, Avenatti, has responded with appropriate theatrical fury. In Tweets published by CNN, he assets: “They [Trump’s team] are now attempting to remove this case to federal ct in order to increase their chances that the matter will be decided in private arbitration, thus hiding the truth from the public.” He added: “The fact that a sitting president is pursuing over $20M in bogus ‘damages’ against a private citizen, who is only trying to tell the public what really happened, is remarkable. Likely unprecedented in our history. We are NOT going away and we will NOT be intimidated.”
Adding further fuel to the fire, Avenatti told CNN: “We’ve been approached by six separate women who have claimed to have similar stories to that of my client.” He added: “Two of them — at least two have (nondisclosure agreements). We’re in the very early stages of vetting those stories.” He suggested that the claims involved Trump.
For those interested in getting an insight into Trump as well as a flavor of the going’s on between the president and the former porn star, In Touch’s former reporter, Jordi Lippe-McGraw, conduct an interview with “Stormy” in 2011, five years before she signed the NDA. According to the publication: “Subsequent to the interview, Ms. Daniels took and passed a polygraph test. The account of her affair was corroborated by one of her good friends and supported by her ex-husband, both of whom also passed polygraph tests.” It adds, “this interview has been lightly edited for clarity and style.”
Clifford’s introduction to Trump at golf-course event and was pretty straight forward. “He was introduced to everybody. He kept looking at me and then we ended up riding to another hole on the same golf cart together and he’s like, ‘I want to come talk to you later.’ Later … [he] asked for my number and I gave it to him. Then he asked me if I wanted to have dinner that night and I was like, ‘Yeah, of course!’” The In Touch interview gives a vivid sense of their first evening together.
Their first dinner was different than Clifford expected. Going to his room, Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, allowed her to enter his suite. “I went in and I was all dressed up because I had just assumed that we were going to go to dinner, but he meant to have dinner in his room. Like he wasn’t dressed to go out at all, just lounging. … I remember saying, because he was all sprawled out on the couch, watching television or something. He was wearing pajama pants. And I was like, ‘Ha, does Mr. Hefner, know that you stole his outfit?’ … He got all huffy and tried to play it off and was like, ‘Oh, I just thought we would relax here.’ We ended up having dinner in the room.”
Clifford recalls that Trump went overboard trying to impress her. “He kept showing me he was on the cover of a magazine that had just come out and it was some sort of money magazine … and I was like, ‘Dude, I know who you are.’ He was trying to sell me, I guess. … The first time I met him, the first couple of hours, he was very full of himself, like he was trying to impress me or something. But I do remember he just kept talking about this magazine that he was on the cover of, like, ‘Look at this magazine, don’t I look great on the cover?’”
Trump then asked her about his hairdo, and Clifford said something like, “’Dude, what’s up with that?’ and he laughed and he said, ‘You know, everybody wants to give me a makeover and I’ve been offered all this money and all these free treatments.’ … He said that he thought that if he cut his hair or changed it, that he would lose his power and his wealth. And I laughed hysterically at him.” At one point she asked about his wife and he dismissed the question: “’Oh, don’t worry about her.’ [And] Quickly, quickly changed the subject.”
When Clifford left the suite’s living room for the restroom in the bedroom, the evening’s adventure changed. “When I came out, he was sitting on the bed and he was like, ‘Come here.’ And I was like, ‘Ugh, here we go.’ And we started kissing. I actually don’t even know why I did it but I do remember while we were having sex, I was like, ‘Please don’t try to pay me.’ And then I remember thinking, ‘But I bet if he did, it would be a lot.’”
Reflecting on Trump, she seems to have quickly pegged him. “I was more like fascinated. I was definitely stimulated. We had a really good banter. Good conversation for a couple hours. I could tell he was nice, intelligent in conversation,” she acknowledged.
“So anyway, the sex was nothing crazy,” Clifford admitted. “He wasn’t like, chain me to the bed or anything. It was one position. I can definitely describe his junk perfectly, if I ever have to. He definitely seemed smitten after that. He was like, ‘I wanna see you again, when can I see you again?’ “[The sex] was textbook generic. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh my God, I love you.’ He wasn’t like Fabio or anything. He wasn’t trying to have, like, porn sex.’ … Nothing freaky. Like, ‘Oh yeah, that feels good. That’s amazing.’ You know. It was one position, what you would expect someone his age to do. It wasn’t bad. Don’t get me wrong.”
For more on the misadventures of the nation’s Commander-and-Chief and the former porn star, check out the In Touch interview.
In 2008, Clifford was then 27-year-old and Trump was 62. One could only wonder if Trump, during his days with Clifford, McDougal and others (whether voluntarily, commercially or unwillingly), was whistling the old Beatles song, “When I’m Sixty-Four,” a song from the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a Valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wineIf I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four
A decade later, Trump is president.